


Emergency Contact

by modernraceownsairpods



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: M/M, bc i love those, hospital fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 10:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18714961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modernraceownsairpods/pseuds/modernraceownsairpods
Summary: Spot and Race are exes, but no matter how hard he tries, Spot still can't get over it. One day, he gets a call from the hospital.





	Emergency Contact

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on Tumblr, but I'm slowly moving all my fics to AO3 because they seem to be more appreciated on here.

He was just about to get into the shower when he got the call.

“Are you Sean Conlon?” A brisk voice asked.

“Yeah, uh, who is this?”

“This is the Hosptial, do you know an Antonio Higgins?

It says here you’re his emergency contact.”

He swallowed, his blood running cold. “…Yeah, I know him. What happened?”

“Is there any way you can make it down here?

There’s been an accident.”

Spot dropped everything. He left his half-empty coffee cup sitting on the table, two bagels left in the toaster. Throwing on any pair of shoes, he had barely enough time to grab his jacket before he was out the door, racing down six flights of stairs. Spot and Race had broken up three months ago, and as much as he had tried, Spot still wasn’t over it.

Speeding out of the parking garage, he turned onto the road, hell-bent on getting to the hospital as fast as humanly possible. His mind and heart raced as he thought of everything that “an accident” could consist of. He thought of Race’s mangled body in the midst of a flaming car wreck, or something worse. He sped up.

He finally squealed into the hospital lot, parking haphazardly in the first open space he saw. He forced himself to walk into the waiting room, instead of sprinting like a madman. He wrinkled his nose at the smell. He had always hated the smell of hospitals. They were too clean, the smell of rubbing alcohol was always permeating the air. It smelled artificial.

As he approached the counter, the woman behind the desk gave him a smile. “What can I help you with?”

“I—uh—I received a call about Racet—uh, Antonio Higgins. Is he here? They said there was an accident. What happened?”

“Hold on one moment, please.” She tapped quickly behind the computer as he waited anxiously.

“Name?”

“Spot, um, Sean. Sean Conlon.” He corrected himself.

Giving him a patient smile, she pressed a button, speaking quietly into a speaker. “Yes, patient 3209’s emergency contact is here. Is he clear to go in?”

A nurse came out of the door behind her and smiled graciously at him. He was getting tired of smiling. He wanted answers, not goddamned smiles.

“Hello, you’re Sean?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Perfect. Follow me, please.”

Spot followed closely behind the nurse, from one hallway to the next. His breath caught as she led him through a set of doors titled,

“Intensive Care.” Down the long hallway, she finally stopped at a room obscured by a curtain.

“This is his room. He’s just gotten out of surgery, so he’s still a little loopy from the anesthesia. He’ll come around in a few hours though. I’ll leave you two alone for a while.”

He motioned to go through the curtain, and the nurse nodded. He thanked her and went through.

There he was. Racetrack Higgins, dressed in the hospital gown, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling. A choked noise came from Spot, and Race opened his eyes, tentatively. A huge grin spread over his face when he saw Spot standing over the hospital bed.

“Spot!” He cried gleefully. “What’re you doin’ here?”

Spot couldn’t help but smile at his ex’ reaction.

“I got a call from the hospital, Racer. What the hell happened to you? I was so worried! The nurse said you just got outta surgery!”

Race let out a giggle. “Oh, I got stabbed.”

Spot, who had turned to pull up a chair, jumped back to attention. “WHAT THE HELL?” A nurse poked her head through the curtains.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to lower your voice, please. He’s been through a lot the past six hours.”

“Of course, I’m so sorry,” He told her, before turning back to the hospitalized boy, a dumbfounded look on his face.

“I got stabbed, Spotty! I can finally cross that off my bucket list,” He sighed contentedly.

Spot’s shoulders shook. “Who stabbed you, Racer?”

Race tried to shrug and the heart monitor spiked as he winced. “I don’t know, same guy who tried to take my wallet.”

The pieces finally fell into place. “You got mugged?”

“No, idiot. I got stabbed. Keep up, God.” Under normal circumstances, Spot would have laughed, however, this was far from normal circumstances. “I need you to tell me everything that happened, Race.”

Race took a breath. “I was walkin’ home from the bar. Probably a little drunk, but that doesn’t matter. Anyway. This guy comes up and pulls a knife on me, told me he’d kill me if I didn’t hand over my wallet.” Spot’s jaw dropped.

“I know, right? Wasn’t even a cool knife either, ‘s’just a boring kitchen knife.” Race slurred a bit.

“Then what happened?”

“I took out my wallet, of course… And then I asked if I could keep my Dutch Bro’s stamp card.” Race burst into a fit of drunken laughter before sobering up and continuing. “He didn’t think it was as funny as I did… I think he got mad when I laughed. So he stabbed me.”

Spot tried to find words. “Antonio Higgins, why the HELL would you do something like that?”

“Because!” Race whined. “Getting stabbed is like, number three on my bucket list! Did you think I was just going to pass up an opportunity like that? Not to mention, I was two drinks away from getting a free drink from Dutch Bro’s!”

“You could have died!”

Race went silent. “Damn… I coulda…” He trailed off. “Why didn’t I think a’that? I coulda been halfway to Hell by now!”

Spot just snickered. “Funny.”

“Bold of you to assume I was joking.” Race shot back.

Spot was taken aback. “I—The hell do you mean?”

Race pouted, but Spot could see something dark lurking behind his eyes. “I don’t gotta tell you anything.”

Spot’s expression changed from shock, to anger, to concern. “Racer, you—you was joking, right?”

Silence.

“Antonio?”

He looked down.

“Oh my god, Antonio. Why?” He didn’t know what else to say.

“I—I wasn’t in a good state of mind… I was angry, don’t know ‘bout what, don’t know why, just angry.” He confessed. “I went out lookin’ for trouble, thought maybe I could fight it out. Y’know like whenever you’d come home mad about somethin’ and we’d end up having angry sex, ‘cept, you know… fighting instead of fuckin’.” Spot prayed no nurses were in earshot. Race continued. “Shot a look at the first shady guy I saw, before I know it, he pullin’ a knife on me, I’m shoutin’, he’s shoutin’, and then…” He stopped, and the steady ‘beep’ on the heart monitor increased slightly.

“I didn’t expect it to hurt so much.”

He finished quietly.

Spot didn’t cry easily, but his eyes were wet when Race had finished. “I don’t know what to say.”

Race ran a hand through his hair, frowning as the tubes connected to his arm got tangled in his hair. “Don’t really remember what happened after that… They took me in for surgery about three hours ago, stitched me up good…” He trailed off once more, and then looked up, meeting Spot’s eyes as he realized something.

“Spot, why are you even here?”

Spot took a breath. “Like I said, the hospital called me. I’m still your emergency contact.”

“Oh. And here I thought it was because you cared about me.” He joked, but Spot could sense a touch of melancholy to his voice.

“Race, of course I care about you!”

He covered Race’s hand with his own and could feel it slightly trembling. “I care about you more than you could ever know.”

Race looked at him. “Do you?” He asked timidly.

Spot let out a soft chuckle. “Of course, Racer.”

Race closed his eyes, tears pricking at his eyes. “Dude, I have something to tell you…”

“What is it, mio cuore?” He knew Race understood what that meant.

“I’m like, so high right now.” Spot let out a begrudging smile. “Like, seriously. Have you heard of this thing called morphine? It’s wild, man.”

He stayed with him, talking and laughing until a nurse came in to shoo him away. Spot promised he’d stay in the waiting room until he was allowed in again.

He fell asleep in the waiting room.


End file.
